Short Review of Mr.Sakuraba's August 14th, 2004 Live Concert

[CocoeBiz]

The band members were the same as the last concert, Mr. Sakuraba (Keyboards), Mr Hasegawa (Bass) and Mr. Nakamura (Drums).

The location was much smaller than the last concert in 2003, and the hall was a good size to see all the musicians up close and see their fantastic performance on the stage. The "Live House" held a maximum of 350 people, and it looked pretty full, possibly close to that number.

There was a slight problem after playing a few songs with one of Mr. Sakuraba's keyboards (yes, there were many keyboards surrounding him) but, they had no problems with continuing show. They played the music from Star Ocean 3, Valkyrie Profile, Baten Kaitos, Star Ocean Director's Cut and Mr. Sakuraba's original tracks that he composed for this live show!

There were 3 original tracks, "Sakuraba's -Progressive Rock- style" captured the audience's hearts, and we all thoroughly enjoyed his new music!

Mr. Sakuraba seemed more relaxed at this live show, and spoke to the audience, thanking to them for coming and talking to the other band members. He is really a modest person and all this fans were happy to listen to him. Mr. Hasegawa and Mr. Nakamura (the Bass and Drums players), said that all Mr. Sakuraba's music were so hard to play, but they also felt so much achievement after playing his music. His original music pieces were the hardest tracks for them, and we, the audience felt the same in good way. They were all extremely exhausted after the live show, well, they were already tired after playing 2 tracks... !

There will be the full review from Mr.J. P. later on, please keep a look out for the review on Mr. Sakuraba's English Website and GoGameMusic.com. Photos of the live concert will be posted on the English Website.

Total of 17 tracks. The concert ran for 2 hours from 18:00 to 20:00 at the Astro Hall in Harajuku. Unfortunately, there was no live recording made of the concert.

Thank you,
CocoeBiz

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately, there was no live recording made of the concert.

Does this mean in regards to DVD footage (so there will be no DVD made) or even the audio, and the actual songs?

I want a CD of this concert VERY MUCH!!!

[squaretex]

Thank you!!!
I'm glad to hear all the news!

...although the bit about "no live recording" is a little disheartening.

[Godai]

Thanks for the review, Kahori! I wish I could have been there...and I'm sad that there was no recording made. I especially wanted to see the live Baten Kaitos music.

[CocoeBiz]

Unfortunately, there was no live recording made of the concert.

Does this mean in regards to DVD footage (so there will be no DVD made) or even the audio, and the actual songs?

I want a CD of this concert VERY MUCH!!!

Hi vkamicht,

I'm sorry but there will be no DVD or CD made of this concert.

Thank you,
CocoeBiz

[Anonymous]

Well now I'm curious; What was the reason for this decision?

[datschge]

It's funny, last year when the first concert came up I was all worrying that I might miss something by not being able to attend it, and afterward we got the DVD which contained several additional goodies. This year I somehow wasn't worried about it at all, probably due to the lack of info about it, and now it turns out I'm missing at least Baten Kaitos and 3 original tracks live as well as live improvisations due to a broken keyboard. If I knew that before I might have cared more about trying to attend it myself. =/

No idea if that's impolite to speak out here, but seeing there'll be no CD or DVD release I sure hope one of the ~350 visitors did a classical concert bootleg recording of the concert like it happened on many rock concerts in the old times. Anyway in any case I hope Motoi Sakuraba keeps doing concerts...

[squaretex]

I actually have a different idea on this matter.

True, I'd love to hear some live Baten Kaitos and the like, but I already have a version of that music on CD, so I can live.

It's the NEW pieces, though, that interest me the most.

If Cocoebiz, Sakuraba, Hasegawa, and Nakamura are willing, why not produce studio versions of these new pieces and offer them on either Sakuraba website (or both) as exclusive downloads?

p.s.
After seeing this (and running it through Babelfish):

http://www.team-e.co.jp/sakuraba/topics.html

...I think I can understand the decision not to release this concert. The new material (not just the three pieces, but the Baten Kaitos and Director's Cut songs) is only a handful.

I hope my "exclusive download" idea can be seriously considered, though.

[datschge]

The new material (not just the three pieces, but the Baten Kaitos and Director's Cut songs) is only a handful.

That's already 8 out of 17 tracks, and that's still assuming he used the same arrangement for the rest of the songs, and for those maybe the broken keyboard changed a lot.

[Carl]

...I think I can understand the decision not to release this concert. The new material (not just the three pieces, but the Baten Kaitos and Director's Cut songs) is only a handful.

Odd, since they made a CD for the Director's Cut, and that was VERY short also, only about 20 minutes worth of stuff, so this wouldn't be much shorter of an album either...

but when buying that, I was pretty disappointed they charged a "full price" for only "half an album of music" so this would have probably needed to be heavily discounted in order to sell, which probably wouldn't have recouped costs then.

Oh well, at least we can enjoy the previous DVD =)